aoelos_

Thanks for the replies so far, I'm going to try and reply to each of you individually but I may repeat some of my responses as similar things have been said. I suggest you read all of my replies either way.
 
 
Thank you for your post Nikki and you're welcome, it took me a while to write and still have more to say.
 
Glad you think there's a future for YAMS, sometimes it feels like there isn't or it's not worth continuing when people don't appreciate the time and money that goes into running it.
 
Yes I too believe the current world has lots of unused areas, it's one of the reasons why we separated the towns so far apart so we lots of area to build in, if we had the towns nearer to spawn and then decided latter we wanted more space we would have to go further out and generate more terrain which would probably not merge correctly if it was done much latter. Yes I try and keep buildings fresh.
 
I've seen people build wonderful things in the normal world and test build world, town moderators should get these people involved as much as possible, they have talent and it should be used so they can feel appreciated.
 
As a mod you know we have had a town theme discussion, the discussion is still there to have, you mods just have to discuss why you want a certain theme change to happen and what benefits it brings and agree between all of you that you are happy for it to go ahead so I can approve.
 
I'm quite surprised that a lot of people are ok with plots, I thought people were not. Also hopefully those who visited the old world would have seen that the plots we have now are much better than what we have before, we had fences all the way round the plot before instead of just the corners and they were much smaller for the most part.
 
Having a free build world is always something I've been worried about having, it's another area to protect/police and a lot of players may just stay there and not get involved around the other parts of the community. If the community really wanted it though, I would look into it. Maybe though it would be nice to do some build challenges again, problem is getting people involved though, also all the hard work never gets seen by others afterwards when the world closes, even if you release the map as download its just not the same as seeing it in YAMS with others.
 
Looking forward to seeing if you have anything else to say.
 
 
Thank you for your post Carter. I'm glad that you think YAMS has a positive future. The decision to continue YAMS or not and how will be based mainly on responses here.
 
I'm sure I can say from me and all our staff, you're welcome, it's very hard work but we try our best.
 
Again I'm quite surprised that a lot of people are ok with plots, I thought people were not. Also hopefully those who visited the old world would have seen that the plots we have now are much better than what we have before, we had fences all the way round the plot before instead of just the corners and they were much smaller for the most part, as you know from places like Winter Wonderland.
 
Like I told Nikki Having a free build world is always something I've been worried about having, it's another area to protect/police and a lot of players may just stay there and not get involved around the other parts of the community. If the community really wanted it though, I would look into it. Maybe though it would be nice to do some build challenges again, problem is getting people involved though, also all the hard work never gets seen by others afterwards when the world closes, even if you release the map as download its just not the same as seeing it in YAMS with others.
 
Yes I would have liked to see other towns to what Snowheim did, not sure if that can change now however and some towns such as Perivale are quite flat.
 
You're mistaken, our first map was between January 2011 - February 2012 (13 months) and our current map February 2012 -  Onwards (23+ months). There's absolutely no way a new world would be up for February 2014, discussions about our current world started in August 2011 a long time before we moved, there's lot to think about and prepare for to ensure a smooth transition, of course now we have done it once if we ever did it again it wouldn't take as long but still discussions would have to happen and a world prepared, took a while last time to generate a world where the towns could all go and there was plenty of nice flat areas for other builds.
 
The new biomes will actually make a new world harder, as there's even more to think about.
 
Sorry but again you're mistaken, it doesn't take 7 minutes to get to a town on a cart, from spawn station (most people would /spawn) it takes 2 minutes and 5 seconds at the minimum, even if you dont /spawn and go 2000 blocks it still doesn't take 7 minutes.
 
Would be nice if we can include some new materials but only if they look good together, as an example we have allowed coloured glass but some players have gone a bit wild on the colour patterns using a lot of colours so some houses look a bit out of place, especially when there's more glass then there is main wall material.
 
We decided not to allow acacia / dark oak wood to be fair on other towns. Another problem is if a town has too many materials you could have too many different types of themes within a town so some houses look out of place.
 
 
Thank you for your post Devon. You're very much welcome.
 
I like to do events, but when people don't turn up then it makes me very disappointed as I go into a lot of effort to ensure they are running on our YAMS setup, a lot of maps now use command blocks and such so I have to make sure these don't impact on the main world or remove the /spawn plugin so you can respawn correctly when you die on an adventure/game map etc. I also have to wake up early and make sure I'm on till the last event at night when running multiple time slots, I try and have multiple time slots so people from all over the world can join. Really wish more people would take part in the events when I run them.
 
Looking forward to seeing if you have anything else to say.
 
 
Thank you for your post Jake. You're very much welcome from all of us, including yourself!
 
Its keeping the players that's hard, we have lots to do you only have to look around as you know and I do listen to feedback on what we can do to improve things but a lot of players don't take the effort to take part or don't understand why we do things the way we do and just assume we are being awkward so leave. Had quite a lot of people use the wishing well in the shopping centre though wish is good, 39 books so far, some people have done multiple wishes.
 
Yes the mines and map corruption was part of the reason why we moved, there was literally air bubble pockets all over the map as if there was supposed to be ores there but they had vanished. This time we haven't had that problem and the mining world has really helped as well as all the space we have to play with, unlike before where it was messy in areas and we didn't have places for things.
 
Glad you like the test build world and plots too, I really was thinking people would say they don't want them, I'm quite surprised but relieved to know those that have commented so far are happy with them.
 
Again you're welcome.
 
 
Thank you for your post Joe. I'm glad you think we are friendly, we may not have some things that other servers have and we do have some restrictions, but we make up for it with our community atmosphere.
 
Yes, need to round people up, like sheep! Who wants to be a Sheppard? Haha.
 
Another two reasons I forgot to mention in the post about why the towns are so far apart are: It allows us to have lots of terrain pre-generated already so we can build lots of nice things on the rails without having to worry at a latter date about expanding the map and where things are going to go and if terrain would be ok, we had this problem in the old world. The other reason was it separates the lag areas, so everything isn't cluttered.
 
Lets look at some coordinates, currently heading north: 0 is spawn tower, -250 is the road at the edge of sandbox, -523 is the road that goes to the coliseum (coliseum width is 227) and then snowheim at -1000 with the castle grounds starting before that. Some towns such as maplehold have houses before (870) you arrive at the station, then there's other things such as adventures that take space!
 
Allowing dark oak is an issue as I said above, you can allow it for one town, if all mods agree but then what about other towns that have less materials, look at perivale as an example that doesn't have different variations for stone and mojang said at Minecon 2012 they will not be doing more stone variations, when I was there and heard that I thought immediately of steer and perivale. Also lets say we allowed dark oak in Snowheim, someone could build a house all made of cobblestone including the roof and then use dark oak and the rest of the town carry on as is, it creates a divide in the theme, that's the biggest problem. I'm not against new materials, I just want to make sure all towns are fair with each other and the towns are themed nicely.
 
You're welcome, lets see what happens.
 
 
Thank you for your post Luke and you're welcome.
 
Sorry what did you say? Ohh you're talking about yourself, we are not here to disguise you Luke, we are here to discuss YAMS. Hehe.
 
When you say biomes, do you mean changing the current biomes with world editing tools etc to those new biomes? I'm not a big fan of changing biomes and I only really do it if there's an issue, such as when Mojang decided it would be a good idea to remove snow fall from Taigas and create a Cold Taiga where it does snow so I had to download the map and convert biomes then reupload etc. Another time is when there was spots all over perivale that didn't have rain while other parts did, some houses had rain on one side and no rain on the other side, so we changed it all to plains to keep the whole town in tune.
 
Funny you say more towns, as some people say we need less. We choose 4 main ones for simplicity, there's a town at the end of each cardinal direction and all at the same length, there's no unfairness and it's easy to go straight to the end of a track and find a town. There was lots of plans to have loads of other towns (not living in) on the corner stations, such as the oasis, underwater town, cave town, valley ravine town etc... but there wasn't that great of a leap of people wanting to help out at the oasis that I haven't come forward about the other towns yet. If people would help finish the current projects off, id love to start on some of the corner stations.
 
Again you're welcome.
 

 
@Everyone - sorry if I missed parts, I've tried to answer as mush as possible and I also don't want to be the only one to comment on what's been said so far.
 
I would like to see more people take part in this discussion, as well as those that have done already, there's plenty more to discuss, don't just think about what I've said in my main post in this topic, there's plenty more to talk about. As an example villagers, I'm assuming you all know why we don't allow village trading? So the shopping centre doesn't become obsolete. But is it something we need to look into again. There's lots of things like this that I haven't mentioned but maybe you'd like to see improved or changed.
 
Looking forward to more replies. If you care about YAMS now is the time to show it by taking part in discussions here.
 
Thanks,
Darren

If you didn't know already, the archaeological reference earlier was towards the old spawn towers buried in the desert, there was a magical portal here to take you back in time to YAMS 1st World. This portal in time has now closed. Hope you had fun.

YAMS is 3 years old today the 9th of January 2014. I truly cannot believe YAMS has been going for 3 years, with nearly 2 of those years being in our current world. It’s been an enjoyable experience so far but you can make it even better by helping shape the future of YAMS.

I'm here to discuss why things are how they are in YAMS and what the future holds for YAMS.

I also would like to find out from the community what they think has and hasn't worked well and how we should proceed with the future of YAMS, if at all there is a future for it?

Let me start my going into detail on the various aspects of YAMS both past and present:
 
A family friendly community
YAMS is a family friendly community orientated server and I wouldn't want it any other way. I truly believe in having a community where everyone can happily coexist. YAMS just wouldn't be the same without the community atmosphere.
 

 
Spawn tower and the rules
A spawn tower has always been present on YAMS; it gives a great vantage point of the centre of YAMS.
 
Spawn tower hasn't always had barriers to prevent you from getting down quick, in fact there used to even be signs in the very old spawn towers encouraging you to jump into the water. Unfortunately however it became apparent that some people were not bothering to read the rules and instead jumping from the tower and running away, since then we have always forced users to walk past the rules room by having fences and such on the top preventing players from making excuses of not having seen the rules.
 
A lot of people say to me you should place a warp at the bottom of spawn tower so we can get down quicker, my answer normally goes along the lines of there are warps everywhere you only need to find them. It’s true, the people that usually ask are just not looking hard enough, where’s the fun in having a warp that’s in plain sight, it’s much more fun and rewarding to find hidden warps, they are there, yes even right at spawn tower, you just need to look.
 
The first original spawn tower didn’t have many rules in it; I had decided that I would start off with little rules and if the community decided to break my trust then I would add rules as required. When first starting off I had no idea that there were people out there that actually had fun in destroying others people creations a lot of the rules you see today are there because at some time or another someone did something to abuse our trust that made us add a rule.
 
Every so often I consult with staff and ask them whether there needs to be any changes to the rules, be it adding or removing rules, changes are made as required. It was only very recently that we updated our current rules, I removed quite a few and made a few of them clearer.
 
I also try and improve the spawn tower in general, such as working out the recent issue of huge FPS lag when 1.6.4 came out, I spent a lot of time working out what the issue was and once I found out that it was signs I spend time finding out solutions, the quick solution was to remove as many signs as possible and allow people to use the Optifine Mod while work was carried out on creating a new tower. It was unfortunate that we lost a lot of the rooms, but I’m very happy with the new tower and does make tours quicker, plus the old signs (stories, events etc) are still in YAMS, they have just been moved to other areas. 
 

 
Sandbox and approval process
When YAMS was first opened to the public, there was no sandbox, people could join and build anywhere without prior approval. This at first seemed quite nice however it soon became apparent that this wasn't working especially as we were becoming even more popular, the community started to become more disjointed with people all over the place.
 
After a few months we started to look into ways to fix this and we came up with the idea of having a Sandbox, players would be able to build a temporary home here so they could explore YAMS properly and meet everyone and choose a town to move too, making them feel a part of the community, after all being a part of the community is our number 1 rule.
 
The whole sandbox system has changed many times through YAMS history, sometimes it was simple other times it was more complex and tedious.
 
At one point you could become semi approved; this meant that I had seen your house when you were offline, but I wanted to see it with you in person, this wasn't to be awkward but rather because I wanted to actually talk with you and show an appreciation for your house and help you, a lot of server admins don’t take time to get to know their players, I wanted to. This semi approved process gave me that once chance to have 1 to 1 time with you seeing your house without anything else getting in the way. Unfortunately however meeting players was a problem some players could only come on for a few hours and I wasn't on at those times. It was decided that for the new world, the one we are in today that this semi-approval process would go.
 
Today the sandbox process is much more streamlined but I am still the only one to do sandbox approvals, this isn't a power thing but rather it still gives me a chance to actually be involved in a players first steps in the YAMS community, of course they don’t have to see me online anymore to get approved but I do try and find out when that player is on and talk to them and leave tip signs in their house, I even like to help players build their sandbox houses when they are struggling.
 
I believe we have fined tuned the sandbox experience as best as possible. I fully understand that there are still things some players see as an issue: too many signs, plots too small, still complicated etc. It’s not easy making everyone happy, getting the balance between things just right. Too few signs and players won’t understand. Too many signs and people lose interest. Bigger plots less plot numbers and players concentrate too long on their sandbox home and forget about all the towns they need to explore and that sandbox is much more than just building a nice house.
 

 
The towns
When YAMS was first opened to the public, just like sandbox there were no set towns, people could join and build anywhere without prior approval. This at first seemed quite nice however it soon became apparent that this wasn't working especially as we were becoming even more popular, the community started to become more disjointed with people all over the place.
 
It was decided that we would try to regroup people by creating specific towns in high populated areas; some players had already started building towns themselves so we had a starting point for most of them but this gave us a chance to define those towns properly and put someone in charge of that town who could approve builds within that town, approvals had to go through me before.
 
In our first world, we had all sorts of different types of towns/places you could live at different times in the first world included: Plankville, Creeper Swamp, Woodbridge, Highland Cliffs, Splinterz, Beachside, Enderville , Tumbleweed, Winter wonderland, SinkCity, Saidai, Hakakai Island, Birchville (removed during town restructuring) and The Lyonesse Inn (A massive underwater hotel never completed before our move to the new world).
 
As you can see it was a big list, this is where a lot of confusion occurred even more so when not all towns were towns you could move into from Sandbox, but rather they were towns where you could rent/buy with iron/diamonds etc a predefined building/room that you could only change the interior of so the exterior of the house was kept in line with the town theme, for example Japanese.
 
It also didn't help that not all towns had the same plot sizes; this caused players to be drawn to the towns with bigger plots.
 
Now we had regrouped most players (there was still lots of disjointed players in the wild), we could start working more closely with players and have a better sense of a community, of course not everyone was happy with this change as they were used to building wherever they wanted but I do believe it was the right decision to make, having everyone all over the map was pretty crazy, it was hard knowing who was who.
 
One of the biggest problems with so many towns was that we didn't have enough staff to cover all towns or staff were appointed for that town then disappeared, leaving the players confused as to what they could or couldn't do and who to speak to, myself and my team were picking up the pieces time and time again.
 
When it came to a new world, we had a chance to structure things properly and that’s exactly what we did. We now have 4 plot based towns one for each main cardinal direction, with the main town station being 1000 blocks away from the centre of spawn tower.
 
The towns are this far away are for multiple reasons:
It makes it easier for people to understand coordinates. It puts a nice distance between towns, so we can build lots of nice and interesting buildings/projects/areas at the side of the tracks for people to see between towns. It gives towns enough area to expand without having to worry of getting in the way of others. It makes players aware of just how large an area we have to play with, which would hopefully inspire some big builds.
 
Town themes
When YAMS was first opened to the public, there were no town themes. Some buildings were wonderfully themed themselves while others were not so nice on the eyes. Some players created town style areas for themselves such as wooden planks in woodbridge and cobblestone in Highlands Cliff before they became official towns for the community.
 
As time went by towns were officially formed and town themes given to those towns.
 
Having town theme styles was a choice that some were happy with while others were not. Some of the reasons behind it were:
It gave towns a personalised style; they were not just a collection of random houses of all types of different materials. Players could build towards integrating within the town, feeling like they were a part of the town style and not just another random person building another random house. Some people would build wonderful things that looked wonderful and would probably feel very welcome in any town regardless of what materials were used (even wool), but others struggled building a house with so many materials to choose from not knowing what looks good together. Picture a cube house made out of dirt/cobble/white wool/pumpkins/sand and gravel, not a pretty sight. Limiting the materials helped people, of course 2 years ago there was less materials then there are now so we had less options of what would go well together. Our current world town theme styles were chosen based on discussions about what the community would like, we had to take many things into account such as:
How easy it was to get those materials. Would people enjoy using them. Would the materials look nice together. The main materials of our current town styles are as follows:
 
Snowheim:
Cobblestone for the main walls. Mossy Cobblestone for small amounts of detail on walls. Dark spruce logs for detail such as corners/rims. Oak plank stairs/slabs for roof. Cobblestone stairs/slabs for roof. Dark spruce logs as extra detail for roof. Farefall:
Stone brick for the main walls. Mossy and cracked stone brick for small amounts of detail on walls. Oak pine logs for detail such as corners/rims. Oak plank stairs/slabs for roof. Stone brick stairs/slabs for roof. Stone brick as extra detail for roof. Maplehold:
Oak, spruce, birch and jungle planks for the main walls. Oak, spruce, birch and jungle logs for detail such as corners/rims. Oak, spruce, birch and jungle stairs/slabs for roof. Acacia and dark oak are not currently allowed. Perivale
Smooth stone for the main walls. White stone slabs for detail such as corners/rims. Stone brick stairs/slabs for roof. White stone slabs for roof. Stone as extra detail for roof. As you can see some towns have a better selection of materials than others, let’s take Maplehold as example.
 
When maplehold was originally chosen as the wooden town there was only one type of plank (oak) and 3 types of log (oak, spruce and birch) this was fine at the time but as Minecraft progressed so did the types of wooden logs and planks available to Maplehold, though I am currently stopping acacia and dark oak from being used.
 
I and the town moderators regularly discuss town themes/styles and what amendments we can make to the town rules, there’s a lot to take into consideration such as would a new block look ok in that town and would all the towns community be happy to change their houses to fit in with the new style, also would it cause any problems for others towns.
 
We try our best to allow things; we are not trying to be difficult rather make the general community is happy and make sure that as best as possible no one town is disadvantaged.
 

 
Town plots
As you know all towns have plots, there’s a multitude of reasons why, let me explain a few things about plots:
Some people like being in a plot as it gives them a place they can call theirs, others don’t like them and feel too restricted. We decided to go town the plot route so people felt like they were a part of a town and had people next to them, giving more sense of a community instead of people living out in the wild never to be seen. The current 14x14 plot sizes were chosen for all towns as that way no one town had an advantage over others, the plot size seemed reasonable. The size was even as people preferred having double doors in the middle rather than a single door. In the previous world an average plot size was 12x12 but a lot were even smaller! Only the town of beachside had a section were there was very big plots of 19x19, players who were seen to be active within that town, would be invited to take a bigger plot, this caused some unfairness. There is currently no set block height for houses, the town rules state “You must only have 2 levels above ground to your house.” along with a pointy roof and attic inside on top. The reason that there isn’t a block height limit is that we trust players not to build ridiculously high houses and also because it’s another rule/restriction to add, despite what some people may thing, I don’t want to keep adding restrictions, quite the contrary. Most rooms are not more than 3-5 blocks high anyway so most houses are all roughly the same height so no one person can over tower others. On a few occasions people have built very high houses and we have had to speak with them and explain why we would like their houses shortened. I believe that while sometimes no height limit can be confusing, it allows you to be flexible in your house design and not have to worry about going those few blocks over a height limit. You can currently dig 11 blocks down from plot level so you could in theory have your basement split into 2 floors of 3 high with double flooring, before September 2013 it was 8 blocks down.
 
Beautifully themed non plot based towns
Just to add to what I explained above about town themes/plots.
 
You will probably have seen lots of beautiful non plot based towns created in Minecraft, but while wonderful looking (mostly done in creative) normally these towns consist of lot of vacant houses (the town is for show) or when people do live in them they can’t really alter much of the structure outside as it will ruin the impression of the beautiful town theme.
 
These towns are normally created by a specific group of people that know what the town should look like, leaving no room for others to join in and those that do want to take part are not sure how to start or feel like they cannot do anything better than what the others are doing anyway.
 
Saidai the Japanese themed town from the old town reminds me a little of this, there were 2 people working on it but after their absence no one knew what to do about the town.
 
What the town of snowheim does in our current world with their plots is something I've always thought was quite nice, the way the plots are on different levels and different paths is quite nice as it makes the town seem less plot based compared to other towns that have a cluster of plots all huddled together.
 

 
Public building requests
I have always made it clear to town moderators that they should actively engage with the players of yams from all towns. I am fully aware how restrictive plots can be at times, so I’ve always wanted to make sure that there are building projects going on within the towns that any player from any town can come and take part in without anyone needing to be on to guide them. Unfortunately even though we have warehouses full of resources for players to use so they don’t have to use their own materials on public builds sometimes there’s a lack of participation from players all round.
 
Any player wanting to build something in YAMS only need post in the relevant section of the forums (town topics for town buildings and community building project forum for other non-town buildings) and ask if they can build it, it’s not so much for approval but more so others can show their interest in wanting to help before approval is given, so many times have we approved things only to have them unfinished while the person who started it goes offline for months and months.
 
Have a look at the past few last pages of each town topic and you’ll see there’s plenty going on within towns and actually quite a lot still going on out of towns, anyone forgot about the Ender Dragon statue? There’s even a warp for that. It's /warp dragon
 

 
The mining world
When YAMS was very first setup, mining was allowed in the main world, this didn't seem like a problem at first but as we became bigger and bigger it was soon apparent that this was a bad idea, not only did it mean there was a limited amount of resources and we would never have the new resources but also that people were digging tunnels into other people’s houses and projects.
 
Our solution was to have dedicated mining areas which could be regenerated back once cleared (some where encased in bedrock), but this was problematic. Luckily once we had upgraded YAMS processing speed and ram we had another solution, the mining world!
 
Our current mining world is refreshed every update or so, when I think it’s ready for a change.
People who say there’s not enough ores are just not looking hard enough, I routinely check ore percentages to ensure the world is still useable for both new and existing players.
 
The mining world rules have changed a lot through the times, I'm hoping the rules we have now in the mining world are much more friendly and open then what we had before. Some of the core principles of the mining world have stayed through the times though, such as the mining world being a place where you mine not build your house.
 

 
The nether world
We do not currently allow people to build individual nether portals, not because I don’t want people to visit the nether but rather because it allows players to have fun exploring YAMS while looking for the community nether portal. It also helps organise the nether refreshes and having one central point for the nether rules.
 

 
The end world
 
There is currently no public way to get to The End as it brings up a few issues, one being that there’s not really much you can do there once you have killed the dragon or the person that does may end up with load of experience levels while others get none, though some people may want the end stone. Instead we use The End for event dragon killing, that way we kill the dragon as a community just for fun. I did plan to do an event to The End, if the dragon statue was finished… but it’s still not.
 

 
The test build world
Some of you may remember that in the old world we had a place called the test build area, a 200x200 build area where you could pay 1 - 2 diamonds (fee was later removed) to build anything really, as long as it wasn’t offensive. Every month the area would be cleared and you would have to pay again if you wanted to build anything.
 
Unfortunately however even after we removed the diamond fee this didn't really take off; I think a lot of players didn't use it because you still had to use your own resources, such a shame more people didn't use it as people were always saying I was being too restrictive, yet here was a place people could build with freedom and they didn't use it.
 
Over a year ago and a year after the original test build area, we opened in our current world the test build world, this was a slightly different approach to what I had before, this time it was more about having a place to allow people to show their ideas and designs to others of things that could be included in YAMS rather than build anything you like.
 
You do of course have to find the test build world portal, but isn’t that part of the fun on YAMS? Finding all these hidden treasures out there and there’s plenty of clues, like did you know the hot air balloons can see the portal to the test build world portal?
 

 
Other worlds
Every so often we open up other worlds on YAMS; a quick count gives me over 30 unique worlds. From past old world backups to adventure worlds and free build worlds. We really have been to a lot of different worlds. Just a shame that as many things on YAMS you open up these things and sometimes players don’t visit, yet they say there’s nothing to on YAMS!
 

 
The transportation system
YAMS has always been known for its extensive rail systems, the rails in minecraft were something that got me playing more in Minecarft before YAMS, so let me explain a bit about the rail system in YAMS:
Our current rail system is in grid format for quickest understanding and access to towns. Every town station is 1000 blocks away from spawn; corner stations (like the oasis) are also 1000 blocks away from town stations. Some people think that the rails are too long, but there’s good reasons for them: They allow you to see things on the way to where you’re going. They help you get a better understanding of the layout of YAMS in a grid fashion, as each town is 1000 blocks away from spawn you can work out your coordinates easier. You don’t need to sprint to a town which requires food/potions as well as having to hold down buttons, you can just pick up a provided minecart and press a few buttons and you’re off, you can even quickly go AFK and do something while you wait for the cart to take you. They are still one of the fastest ways to travel excluding the newly added horses
 
Banning
You may be aware, our current policy here at YAMS is once you have been banned we had good reason to do so and we will not unban you, unless there's been a mistake, which is very rare. Our policy is this way because usually if you've done something we can forgive you for we will jail instead that way giving you a chance to explain yourself, though if you don't turn up for months to discuss it, then you may be banned. I've done some unbans in the past and they never turned out well, since then I stick to no unbanning.
 
Of course no unbanning does present its own issues, some players move on while others just cant take no for an answer and instead go on a pathetic revenge, I've received my share of unwanted abuse. These players do not get unbanned, but they do show me that we did the right thing in the first place by banning them, anyone who abuses me, my staff and the community or wants to harm our community in general doesn't deserve to be a part of our community.
 

 
Wrapping up
There’s so much more I’d like to tell you about YAMS and why we do things the way we do, but I've already spent way too long writing this post and I really don’t want to bore you (8 full pages long in word at this point excluding images). I hope that you find everything above fascinating and I have given you a better understanding of YAMS so you can help contribute to its future. Maybe you'll even go exploring a bit more... just like this person in the image below having fun on an adventure and yes all the images in this post are from YAMS at one point or another.
 

 
The future of YAMS is the title of this post… and I’m here to tell you the future of YAMS is:
 
 

 
That's it… there’s nothing to say, the future of YAMS is open for debate, it's a blank slate, there is currently no planned future. I want you all to take some time and think about what you've learnt above and post constructively below on what you think should happen with YAMS. To get you started I’ll give you a selection of things to think about, but please don’t just answer these think of your own too, these are just to help you think of what to say:
Is there a future for YAMS? We've been in our current world for 2 years now; how long do we have left? What would get people involved more in building public builds? Are the current town themes ok? Is there a better way than plots? We have a test build world but would a free build world work too? Or would it just make players neglect the normal world even more, not helping on community projects, as free build can be very much do your own thing rather than help the community. What could make the YAMS experience better? Ok good luck with your posts everyone, I’m looking forward to your replies and please comment on each other’s posts too, this is a discussion forum, so let’s discuss!

Attention residents of Snowheim and YAMS!!!

 

Snowheim is proud to announce the grand opening of the unique underground stables.

There is a horse friendly access point to the underground tunnels just outside of the current farm location. Signs lead the way to the old 'horseshoe' area which has now been transformed almost overnight (2 days and one very late night to be exact), into a fabulous Stable area.

 

ride your horse around the back of the stables and chose one for your horse to stay for a while. Signs will be available to let others know what your horse is called and who it belongs to

There will be chests provided soon with some hay and carrots as a welcome gift for your Horse.

 

hope you like and enjoy using the new town feature

 

Nikki

Happy new year everyone for 2014. 

I wish you all the best for 2014 and hope you accomplish everything you would like to do in life. A big thank you to everyone that has supported me both in and out of YAMS. I couldn't have done it without you my friends and community, keep that support coming! 

Worth noting that YAMS will be 3 years old this 9th of January 2014, so feel free to post anything you want to see happen for the anniversary below.

There will also be a Future of YAMS post coming sometime this week, so look out for that, I will go into details of why some things are how they are in YAMS now and what the future holds for YAMS. I will be asking for constructive feedback on what you want to see happen to YAMS.

Bring on 2014! 
 
P.S. This year I was first namscupcake!

I'd be up for helping anytime! Tho if on a weekday itd probably have to be around 10ish ur time...so dont know if that really works for most people, tho I could always work by myself

Everyone who currently has a town/sandbox plot has been left a present from me.
 
Also regarding the survival world I mentioned above, at least 24 people have been but I don't think anyone's collected any Christmas essence, there's certainly none in the chest, I'll leave the world for a few more days.... you better team up and quick if you want to spawn a Grinch!

I have opened up the portal to the Christmas northpole world again.
 
You can find the portal in the underground caves near the Christmas village, use /warp xmas2013 - go down the path and at the YAMS Christmas tree turn right --->
 
Enjoy, please make sure when building things in this world you keep close together so everything isn't really separated!

Yams has now upgraded to 1.7, enjoy!
 
A few things:
No new mining world yet as I may change the mining hub, in the mining hub competition I did say in my last post: Congratulations to Nikki and everyone else that helped out on the mining hub mushroom, we shall be using this design + some modifications as the first chosen mining hub. Using some of the others will depend on things, but I will try. Infected mini game is currently broken. I haven't decided on server icon yet, so for now I've used mine. There may be other bugs. Thanks.

We need a well admin more than we need 1.7.2. Hope u feel better soon

I tried earlier placing them up the top, was quite high up! But may work...
 
I also tried placing on top of the cobblestone walls and also the pillars but with arrows pointing to which one it was for. XD

Minecraft servers can now have server icons that display in the multiplayer server list, I think YAMS needs one.
 
In good old blue peter fashion (UK TV Show), here's one I made earlier:
 

 
But I challenge you all to see if you can make a better one!

The icon:
The image icon must be a .png The image icon must be 64 Height x 64 Width in pixels. Background transparency is allowed, its recommended over white background space. Should ideally reflect YAMS in general, even more so Minecraft. Doesn't have to say YAMS, but would be nice. Nothing offensive, keep icons clean, we are a family friendly minecraft server. Entering:
Anyone can enter including staff so long as they are not banned from YAMS. You may use this topic to upload/post and discuss feedback on your designs. You may enter more than one icon into the competition. Icons may be uploaded here, hosted elsewhere or emailed to icon@yetanotherminecraftserver.com When uploading/sending your icons please ensure that your icon is of high standard and that it uses the format of PNG and is 64x64, if possible please also provide us with you original save files of the graphics program you used before you exported it to png (e.g. PSD etc…). This is in case we wish to make changes at special occasions such as Halloween/Christmas etc. Do not steal other peoples icons/images etc out there and try and pass them off as yours. In submitting an icon design, you agree you are signing over the copyright of your icon design to YAMS, that is, any icon design submitted to the competition becomes the property of YAMS. YAMS will have the exclusive right to use/modify and reproduce any design submitted to the competition as it sees fit. Selection process
Winners will be decided exclusively by Darren Straight in 2 weeks time. Prizes
1st place you will be given the grand prize of having your server icon used for YAMS. You will also get to know the location of a hidden adventure of YAMS, should you know this location already but not completed it, you be given some help. You will also get to see the inner working od the adventure once you have completed it. As an extra bonus providing you complete the adventure you will also get an exclusive behind the scene preview of another adventure of YAMS! 2nd place you get to know the location of a hidden adventure of YAMS, should you know this location already but not completed it, you be given some help. You will also get to see the inner working of the adventure once you have completed it. 3rd place you get to know the location of a hidden adventure of YAMS, should you know this location already but not completed it, you be given some help. Everyone that enters properly with effort will also receive 1 in game present! Extra Info

A small sample of free tools to help you get started if you don't already have something:
Gimp (Free graphics editor) Paint .NET (Another free graphics editor) Minecrafter font Minecraft text style generator Good luck everyone!

Have a look in Farefall warehouse. I think we have at least a double chest full of the stuff

Shopping centre update:
 
Just to make you all aware, namscupcake is now in charge of the shopping centre/collecting rent.
 
If you don't pay on time she will use her kitty claws on you, as well as throw hard cupcakes at you!

NO, No sleeping allowed - go on YAMS NOW!
 
Haha just kidding, rest well.

UPDATE:
 
Well the competition is over, thanks to everyone who took part.
 
Its been very hard trying to choose a winner, so much so that I still have not chosen one, a lot of them could be clear winners if certain things where changed. I believe quite a few of you forgot to plan ahead and actually follow some of the key instructions such as rule space... though well done on everyone getting some decent spawn to out of hub times, from 10-12 seconds which beats our current 20 +/- Seconds time, due to the ladders.
 
The biggest part of this completion, which I did keep saying was getting others involved, I had hopped that you would all team up and come up with fewer designs if not one main one with al your ideas joint instead of all doing your own thing!
 
Because of this I'm going to take the weekend to think about the winner, but I do have one idea which involves using as many of the designs as possible (maybe one each time we update), no guarantees they will all get used (especially if need rule space), but at least hopefully it would give everyone the chance to get some acknowledgement as quite a few where helped on by others.
 
Ok for now, here's some feedback, took me a while so I hope you find it useful!
 
Bluebell the sheep
 
- Led by changingtuna88.
- Known helpers as per signs: Nikki_Nutta, Namscupcake, Izzyair, Kolayhe and Captain_Marbles.
- Was not finished on time, was finished after deadline.
- 28 blocks wide so east to fit in places.
- From the outside down below it looks quite interesting you certainly would not miss it.
- On first spawn you can mostly see 360 degrees all round, one direction is blocked by the sheep’s head.
- The first spawn point feels a bit basic and woolly, it’s a sheep so that’s understandable but maybe some carpet or something could have been used to break up the same colour over and over.
- The chests are a nice thought for new players but I’m not sure if they would actually ever get used as new players do have the ones in Sandbox public mining portal they can use. Also who would stock?
- Enough space for existing rules, but not enough space to add any new ones.
- I like how you are forced to walk past the rules.
- No way back up, excluding /mvs which doesn’t count.
- Pool of water is needed but does present the issue of me having to remember to build it each time as I want mining hubs to be quick and easy to place. I guess I could include it in the copy and paste but just something to remember when Im trying to rush and get everything ready when updating mining worlds.
- Water pool is surrounded my monsters during the night time, maybe some light would have been a good idea. Of course this goes against what I said above.
 
Airship / Blimp
 
- Led by Captain_Marbles.
- Known helpers as per signs: Nikki_Nutta, Namscupcake, Izzyair, Kolayhe, SteerpikeSister, SwanofWar, Zhon_Lord, aoelos_ and darrenstraight.
- Was pretty much finished on time, but some small changes were done after.
- Size is irrelevant as it’s in the air which makes it easy for me to place.
- From the outside down below it looks quite interesting but it could do with a bit more detail added to the hull, it feels very blocky.
- On first spawn you cannot see 360 degrees all round, but this is somewhat provided above.
- Enough space for existing rules, but not enough space to add any new ones.
- I feel the rules could be maybe a bit more prominent so you can’t just turn your back on them and leave the room, being forced to walk past them would have been a nice choice instead. This is based on past experience with the 2011 mining hub; hence why in 2012 you were made to walk past them so there was no excuse.
- The cannons are a nice touch
- No way back up, excluding /mvs which doesn’t count.
- Pool of water is needed but does present the issue of me having to remember to build it each time and in the correct place to stop deaths. I want mining hubs to be quick and easy to place. I would not include it in the copy and paste as that’s the advantage of it being a floating hub so it would just have to be something to remember when I’m trying to rush and get everything ready when updating mining worlds. A water flow could have maybe been an easier option.
- Water pool is surrounded my monsters during the night time, maybe some light would have been a good idea. Of course this goes against what I said above.
 
Cobblestone structure
 
- Led by aoelos_.
- Apparently no one else helped, so signs saying so.
- Quite big at 42 blocks wide, would have to do quite a bit of terraforming around it each time it was laced not to mention trying to find a place for it.
- From the outside down below it looks quite interesting but it does feel a little bit to snowheim, that’s not a bad thing but this a community place not a town place.
- On first spawn you can see 360 degrees all round, though the outside towers do block some views.
- Fire is quite noisy and could also lag people.
- I like how you are forced to walk past the rules.
- Plenty of space for the current rules and a bit of extra space if I ever need to change them.
- I really like all the rooms; it's a nice addition and brings back memories of the old 2011 mining hub. Though I do notice one room has nothing in it and also there’s a tools room though not really a main feature, who would stock this?
- Lots of detail and features but as mentioned above does feel very snowheim.
 
Mushroom tower
 
- Led by Nikki_Nutta
- Known helpers as per signs: Benvenutab and Izzyair.
- Only 33 blocks wide so easy to place.
- From the outside down below it looks quite interesting but it doesn’t feel too much like Farefall as there’s a red roof and no pine.
- On first spawn you can see 360 degrees all round, though I do keep finding myself jumping up and down to try and look outside, I feel a better approach would have been to use a 1 high set of fences or walls then have support fences/walls supporting the top of the mushroom, though I’m not sure how this would look and there would have to be no gaps with the diagonal running fences which might be an issue as I don’t believe there’s the space to do this.
- Plenty of space for the current rules and a bit of extra space if I ever need to change them. Which I probably would have to at least in terms of making the existing rules fit on an odd number of signs instead of even amount of signs so things are still centred.
- There’s only a partial way back up the tower, you can’t reach the very top, excluding /mvs which doesn’t count.
- Not major, but I find it a little annoying that as you come out of the tower and down the paths that to get out you have to go to one of the side gates, you cant get out straight down the middle as its a fence with a sign on it. Maybe a better addition would have been make the end of the path all fence gates then have preasure plates on the floor to get out quick. The sign could be moved to the side.
- One last addition, the mushroom itself could maybe be a bit more taller and fuller, like how half a sphere would look like. It just feels a little shallow though not really noticeable too much.
 
Floating island
 
- Led by ryanfenton.
- Apparently no one else helped, so signs saying so.
- Size is irrelevant as it’s in the air which makes it easy for me to place.
- Plenty of space for the current rules and a bit of extra space if I ever need to change them.
- A little bit of extra space to the side of the rules board would be nice, there’s space at the front but as you turn to go round the back it feels tight.
- The extra floating island I suggested has worked out well, one would hope of course it wouldn’t cause too much of a distraction to the actual rules.
- I like how a water fall has been used this makes it easier for me, though I do think this could have been made a bit better, made into more of a river feature than an exit.
- There is a pool of water at the bottom which is to quickly rebuild when needed.
- Water pool is surrounded my monsters during the night time, maybe some light would have been a good idea. Of course this goes against what I said above being good there isn’t much of a need for me to sort out the pool of water when I copy and paste.
 
Hobbit hole.
 
- Led by Izzyair.
- No official signs placed saying who helped. I know Nikki helped but her names not on any signs.
- Not enough space for rules.
- An interesting concept but incomplete for a proper judgement.
 
Stone brick structure
 
- Led by ElseJon
- Not much for me to say as was nowhere near finished.
 
Fence and dirt structure
 
- Led by namscupcake
- Not much for me to say as was nowhere near finished.

Greetings residents of snowheim and other towns of yams.
I know you are all busy with the mining hub build at the moment but please don't forget we still need some designs on a tower to be hidden in town somewhere.
Also we still have a long way to go on our castle project. I know Luke is in charge of this however I don't want it all to be left to him to do everything. I know we have had some players helping lately an for this am grateful. But I would like to see some things being built soon to allow us to move on to other things. And maybe help other towns too.
 
I am quite busy this week and probably won't get on as much as I would like buy I will still try to pop in now and then (probably when I am working at the same time ).
Hope you are all enjoying the horse riding and see you soon
 
Nikki

IMPORTANT:
 
Unfortunately bigtycoflex who was previously in charge of the shopping centre had not kept up to date with those of you who have not paid rent, because of this I am temporary taking charge of the shopping centre till I can find another member of staff to do so for me.
 
I have created a google doc spreadsheet for everyone to view at the following link:
 
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqAemjBteezKdElPNm83VE5TdG5XQkxHcnFFd1JXZ1E&usp=sharing
 
This spreedsheet lists every pay day date in format of "Day/Month/Year" and also is colour coded so you know if you have paid or not, green means you have paid, red means you have not.
 
Some of you are way overdue, failure to pay may result in eviction as well as enderman being sent to your house to take the rent!
 
I hope you find the spreadsheet very useful.
 
P.S. As a reminder this forum is for applications and shop closures only, any concerns you can message me.

Here's a little something for you all, sorry it's not great quality (click image to enlarge) a lot of the isometric mappers now either don't recognise the new blocks or map it in a google maps style map which is nice but it's not just one single image I can embed here.
 

phew! my baby looks good still.

Ok, so turns out runway went on quite a bit farther than i did last night >.> but, thanks to Jon, lottie, & philymon4 we got it done! I also finished the roof on duty free at airport, and will start on fence.
 
EDIT: Lottie and me finished the fence

Just wanted to say a massive thank you Nikki for getting snowheim back on it's feet, it's really starting to look good.
 
I just hope the other towns can take a leaf out of your book and learn too before it's too late and I have to step in!
 
Also thanks aoelos_ (luke) for sorting out the castle area, keep it up!
 
What's next for snowheim then?

Free build weekend is now over, I have closed access to the world and removed your items, if you have a ridiculous amount of xp on you (obtained from freebuild world) please could you get rid of it by dying in lava or something, saves me having to clear it myself, I'm sure I can trust you all right?
 
Here are some images of the world.
 
We will return some day!
 

Just thought id post a public statement regarding the recent issue of the yams forums being reported as containing malware.
 
I was first aware of the issue Saturday night where one player (aoelos_) was being redirected to a different website. I thought this might be spyware his end as I could not seem to reproduce this my end and scans showed nothing wrong.
 
But a few hours latter and another player (ZhonLord) was reporting the problem, explaining that his antivirus AVG was telling him that YAMS forums has a blackhole rootkit. Barty informed me of this, but my phone was on silent so I did not receive the message till much latter.
 
Once I was aware that others were experiencing issues and I too was getting the problem, I started to investigate.
 
It became apparent that a lot of my web hosted files had become infected with malware. Malware had embedded itself in the code.
 
I was up till past 4:00 am in the morning clearing all the malicious code.
 
Unfortunately however when I woke up after 4-5 hours sleep I found out that the malware had returned, there was only one  way forward now, this was to completely backup all files and do a fresh install of the forums and my blog and everything else that had become infected. This is did which took quite a while as I had to reupload all your forum attachments and all my blog images and such.
 
I believe the problem is now fixed but If you believe there is an issue again, please do not hesitate to contact me.
 
As a precaution I have signed up to a premium version of a Website Malware Scanner (http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/scanner/), it costs £60 / $90 but I believe it's in the best interest of everyone so we know we are protected.
 
Thanks to everyone for your support both in terms of informing me of the issue and supporting me trying to fix it.
 
And lastly my apologies for any problems this may have caused you.

some pictures of lukes plane

the chicken all ready for lift off

the buiness seating
 
sorry for some reason the pictures are small